Eureka 3.10: "Your Face Or Mine?"

I never like when shows take major characters and remove them from the series for a week. They usually come up with some random excuse why that person isn’t around, usually a conference in some far away city or some other random crap. This past week's episode of Eureka titled “Your Face Or Mine?” was that kind of episode, well sort of. Sheriff Carter was taken out of the mix and the rest of the city was left to fend for themselves.

At the start of the episode Carter is about to enter his bi-annual re-certification exam, a sort of stress test to see if Carter is still fit for his job. Ignore the fact that it’s bi-annual and he’s never taken one of these tests on the show before. Jo is just walking out of the two day exam and we find she’s passed with flying colors, “perfect“ as the testers call her. As Carter walks in Jo officially becomes acting sheriff and Carter is out of the picture for the next couple days. See how they did that? Let the hijinks begin!

Thankfully Carter was not completely taken out of this episode. We did see him working on his test but it didn’t really matter to the plot line other than it forced Jo to figure out a few issues on her own. The scenes with Carter were pretty damn funny though so it was one of the highlights of the episode.

The main story revolved around a number of thefts that began occurring around Eureka right after Jo was accidentally electrocuted while being the first person to be put into the town's new DNA tracking system. The thefts eventually lead back to Jo who hasn’t been herself since the mishap and has even been blacking out for short periods of time. But all is not what it seems in Eureka. Turns out Julia Golden, one of the doctors who had performed the bi-annual re-certification exam on Jo had actually stolen her DNA and made herself look just like Jo. If I had a nickel for every time that happened. Anyway, Julie actually replaces Jo’s DNA with her own and by the climax the entire town has had the old switch-a-roo pulled.

By the end though all is well again. Jo and Julie are swapped back, Carter has completed his test with flying colors and Fargo has even got a chance to get some play. Turns out Julie wanted to be more like Jo in order to get closer to Fargo. That lucky dog. So Julie gets a slap on the wrist and will be able to remain in town. From the looks of things her character will be returning in the next few episodes as Fargo’s new love interest.

A decent episode sure but it felt a bit like filler. Last week I mentioned how it looked like some sort of radio disturbance from an object heading toward Eureka would be the main focus of this season. Unfortunately this wasn’t even touched upon in this episode. Hopefully next week we’ll get a little more info on what exactly is going on here.